There has been a lot of talk about the page rank of 2 that displays when you go to http://www.msn.com. This is a case of seeing not being believing.

Here's why it's bogus:

Note that it is a PAGE rank, not a SITE rank.

Their front PAGE is violating the rules of redirects. Try to go to http://msn.com, and you get an incorrectly set up redirect to http://www.msn.com (temporary rather than permanent according to Google Guy).

GoogleGuy also points out that the http://msn.com page has a page rank of 8.

Also that the Shopping page at MSN has a page rank of 9 - very big of them, considering that MSN is a competitor.

Now the real issue here is whether or not you have faulty redirects on your site. Google gave MSN such a HUGE cut for it, it has become obvious that temporary redirects are officially being treated as VERY BAD (to use an industry term).

Here is what GoogleGuy said exactly:

MSN has been doing some different redirects lately. This isn’t a deliberate action on Google’s part. If you check, you’ll find that their root domain http://msn.com/ has a PR8.

And if you can't trust a nameless faceless Google insider, who can you trust?

The most important thing to take away from this?Temporary redirects can get ANYONE massively penalized, but it's totally fixable. Just correct your redirects.